Social-Emotional Learning: Social Awareness

Recognizing Situational Demands and Opportunities is a very important adult SEL skill.

Learning to play with others is an important step in  human development. - it is the first step of understanding that all human behavior is communication. Later we learn to adjust our behaviors according to the location or people we interact with, which reduces our frustrations in social situations.

After just watching others play we start to play near others, but not really with them. After this parallel play we learn to interact more with others and usually after the age of 4, we start to pay attention to their body language and the tone of their voices and cooperate with others. But our development continues throughout our lives, and we learn to understand others better. If we choose to.

 

We all have different ways and different skills to  express our needs. This is why the hardest part of growing up might be learning how to hear the real message behind certain behaviors. And in any interaction we can decide to respond to the need of the other, instead of simply reacting to what they say or do. 

Our perception of the behaviors of others defines our actions. Not the reality, but our interpretation of the situation. I am still learning this! 

Social-Emotional Learning: Responsible Decision-Making

Learning and teaching about making better decisions is an important part of SEL. And I think Responsible Decision-Making is a lifelong process. Some things that were not safe for us in childhood, but were okay in early adulthood, may become dangerous again when we age enough. But having a safe place to practice making responsible decisions is essential.

Learning and teaching are always situational and contextual activities. We need to know ourselves and understand the needs of our students to be successful in supporting their agency and create physically and emotionally safe learning environments where students can practice making responsible decisions. It is a skill like anything else and therefore cannot magically emerge in a vacuum without practice.

Providing these safe and positive learning experiences has a long-lasting impact in out students lives.  

Social-Emotional Learning: Self-Awareness

Engaging in Self-Awareness practices helps us understand our reactions to daily situations, and make an active choice of how we want to deal with them. Remembering that we have choices is a crucially important part of our agency - and when our own agency is strong, we can better support our students' agency, too. Learner agency is the students' voice and choice in their own learning.

Finding time for practicing self-awareness can be hard. My solution is to go for a walk in the nature because it helps me to focus. 

How are you supporting your wellbeing? What are your practices for learning more about yourself?

CASEL has a great resource for Transformative SEL, where you can find more about supporting students identity and agency. And  HOPE is a helpful resource for embedding positive experiences to our everyday teaching practices.

Social-Emotional Learning: Relationship Skills

Connection to nature is an important part of learning the social-emotional skills we all need. 

Recent research emphasizes the impact of nature on people's health. We need fresh air and water. Kids love to play with water and sand.

Here is an interesting article from "Project Learning Tree"

Mother Nature is a great teacher and getting kids outside to learn and play is good for their brains and their bodies. 

Contact with nature is more essential today given that children are spending nearly 8 hours a day using entertainment media and only 6 percent of children ages 9-13 play outside on their own. We are at risk of losing an entire generation’s appreciation for how nature works and what it needs to remain healthy and productive.

Here you can listen about  Trauma-informed Design 

And here is recent research about nature connection:

Lanza, K., Alcazar, M., Chen, B., & Kohl III, H. W. (2023). Connection to nature is associated with social-emotional learning of children. Current Research in Ecological and Social Psychology, 4, 100083.